Royal baby does not deserve news media exultation

In 2005, Prince Harry, uncle of the British royal family’s new baby,… (Jim Watson, AFP/GETTY IMAGES…)

July 24, 2013|Paul Carpenter

The ranks of the world's most useless institution have increased by one, as spectacularly splashed across the top of The Morning Call's front page on Tuesday and lovingly detailed on page 10.

The fact that nearly every newspaper in America did the same thing does not lessen my chagrin. Royal families everywhere are an affront, and the English royal family is the most cankerous of all, so it's embarrassing when my profession fawns over them.

This is not the first time I've said harsh things about my own paper. On separate occasions in 2005 and 2009, for example, I griped because The Morning Call largely ignored teams of students from the Lehigh Valley area who won national math competitions, while playing up a baton twirling contest and the plight of a lonesome cat.

This week we learned all about a baby boy born to Prince William and his wife Kate, heirs to the British throne, which should be regarded by any American as a position of dubious honor.

This was after another Brit achieved something actually noteworthy, and coverage of it was relegated to a little agate snippet under Monday's weather report. (The Lehigh Valley is a world-renowned mecca of cycling competition, thanks to the velodrome in Trexlertown, yet news about a depraved royal family outshone Chris Froome's victory in the Tour de France.)

The topic of royalty is one of a few areas where my wife and I have irreconcilable differences. She is a native of Japan, which also has a useless royal family, although not as repulsive as the clan in Britain.

If you see me with a rolling-pin dent in my head, it's likely because of a perfectly cogent point I sometimes make. The only thing the communists ever did that I admire, I've told my wife, was the way they solved the problem of Russia's tyrannical monarchy. Ninety-five years ago this month, the commies, then called Bolsheviks, made sure there was no going back.

I suppose it is necessary to hereby state that I do not advocate the murder of all members of royal families, at least not if there is some other way to get rid of them.

George Washington and the other Founding Fathers also resorted to bloodshed to make sure there was no going back, and before Americans celebrate the arrival of a new heir to the British throne, they should ponder some facts about that royal family.

The first fact is that the House of Windsor consists mainly of a bunch of people who represent the worst elements of German, not English, culture.

The "Windsor" name was invented during World War I because the royal family's previous name, "the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha," reflected German roots. At that time, English King George V, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth, was a cousin of Nicholas II, one of the Romanov monsters eliminated by the Bolsheviks.

Also during World War I, German bombers attacked London but avoided harming their pals in royal palaces, as would happen again during World War II.

Prince Charles Edward, another grandson of Victoria, was the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in Germany, joined the Nazi Party, became a Nazi general and held key positions in Nazi Germany while he was a "prince of the United Kingdom."

George V sired King Edward VIII, famous in America for gallantly giving up the throne to marry a divorced American woman. Less romantic accounts told of how he, too, supported Hitler and the Nazis and displayed the Nazi salute. He spent most of the war in the Bahamas. After the war, he was warmly welcomed back to the House of Windsor and was affectionately known as the Duke of Windsor. In 1970, he was honored by President Nixon as a guest of honor at the White House.

Have the royal family's leanings changed? Prince Harry, Prince William's brother, was photographed while wearing a Nazi uniform, complete with swastika armband, at a party in 2005.

In the 1940s, American taxpayers were forced to give tens of billions of dollars to Great Britain under Lend Lease and the Marshall Plan, with only a fraction ever repaid. Britain needed the aid to fight the war, to be sure, but also to pay for the lavish lifestyles of the royal family. Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William's grandmother, is now worth more than $15 billion, thanks in part to a $12.9 million government salary for doing absolutely nothing worthwhile.

The less said about Prince Charles, father of William and Harry, the better. And all these creatures are descendants of King George III, the demented tyrant who gave America good reason to divorce itself from Britain in the first place. So I do not see the birth of another royal as something to celebrate.

If Americans in general and the American news media in particular are going to celebrate the birth of a new heir in the House of Windsor, why not do the same in the case of other useless celebrities?

Let us have big puff pieces on the next baby born to Casey Anthony, Lindsay Lohan, June Shannon (mother of Honey Boo Boo), or maybe Octomom Nadya Suleman. Each of those individuals, as far as I'm concerned, has more class in her big toe than all members of the British royal family, combined, have in their entire bodies.